


Put your hand in mine

by EmmaArthur (EchoBleu)



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence, Caring, Friendship, Hospitals, Injury Recovery, M/M, Pre Canon, pre-malex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:54:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21516025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EchoBleu/pseuds/EmmaArthur
Summary: A softer beginning for Michael and Alex's relationship after Alex loses his leg.
Relationships: Michael Guerin & Alex Manes, Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 28
Kudos: 189





	Put your hand in mine

**Author's Note:**

> I started this story before I even finished watching season 1, when I didn't have a good feel for the characters yet. It's been completely rewritten since, but the idea never left my mind.
> 
> Thank you to eveningspirit for handholding!

The sudden vibration makes Michael jump, until he realize he's forgotten his phone on the edge of his desk. His pencil makes a wide line over the schematics he's trying to draw, and he curses. Scrambling to catch the phone before it falls off the desk, he almost stumbles off his chair entirely.

Michael frowns briefly at the unknown number on the small screen−very few people actually call him on his phone−and pushes the answer button.

“Yes?”

“Hey,” a voice says, and Michael chokes on his breath. “It's Alex. Manes,” he adds after a bit, like Michael could ever forget his voice.

He's just struck speechless.

“Alex,” he breathes. “What− why− how did you get my number?”

“I have people,” Alex answers, with just a hint of a smile in his voice.

“Seriously?”

“No. I called Maria, who asked Max. You're not that hard to find.”

“Did you want me to be?” Michael reacts on instinct. He doesn't know how to talk to Alex, not after ten years. They haven't seen each other, haven't heard each other's voice in _ten years._ “Ten years, Alex.”

“I know,” is all Alex says.

“What do you want?” Michael can't imagine that he would call like this, out of the blue, just to reminisce. There's got to be a purpose there, something he needs. Only he can't see what Alex might need from a drunk mechanic who lives in a trailer.

“I...I don't know,” Alex hesitates. “I shouldn't have−”

“Don't hang up!”

Just because Alex must want something, doesn't mean Michael can bear the thought of losing this connection, so soon, after hearing his voice again.  He sits back, cradling the phone close to his ear, and thankfully he's not met with the beep of the call ending.

“Okay, okay,” Alex murmurs. “I just−”

For the first time, his amazement fading a little, Michael really notices how weak his voice sounds, how tired.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“Uh, not−not really,” Alex answers quietly. “I−I got injured, got flown back, and−”

“How bad, Alex?” Michael almost interrupts him in panic.

“I'm alive,” Alex sighs.

Michael doesn't even know how to interpret that. Alex is well enough to have called him, to have gone to the trouble of finding his number, so he must not be at death's door−or is he?

“Where are you?” he asks.

“At the VA hospital, in Albuquerque,” Alex says.

Michael looks around−he's not wearing a watch, but there's an alarm clock on the edge of the desk closest to his bed. “I can be there in...under five hours,” he says, trying to calculate what traffic might be like.

“Visiting hours will be over and you−you don't have to come.”

Michael ignores the last part, though the complicated, self-crushed hope in Alex's voice gets him deeply. “Tomorrow, then?”

“You really−”

“Alex, I'm coming. Just tell me when.”

There's a blank. “I−thanks. Early afternoon, I think. I'm in room 202.”

“I'll be there at one,” Michael promises in a breath.

He wants to ask more, about what happened, about the  _ten years_ they've spent apart, but he doesn't. There's ten years between them. They can't do this over the phone.

He  _needs_ to see Alex, more than he has since Alex didn't come back to school after that day in the shed.

“Thank you,” Alex murmurs. This time Michael can't even parse the emotions in his voice. He knows the ones that are warring inside himself.

Hanging up tears Michael inside. How quickly this link, this thread between them that's Alex's voice in the phone, has become a lifeline. How quickly he's let himself be drawn back.

Unless he was never gone at all.

That night, Michael gets drunk. Not enough that he'll be hungover in the morning, but he needs to take the edge off. He punches a bigot in the face and prays that the phone call wasn't a dream.

In the morning, he gets behind the wheel of his car terrified of what he's going to find.

Michael checks the number he’s written on his hand and compares it to the one on the closed door in front of him. Closing his eyes, he takes a deep breath. Behind that door is a man he hasn’t seen in ten years. A man he hasn’t stopped thinking about in ten years.

Who called him out of the blue to say he’s back from a war zone, alone in the hospital, injured in ways Michael can only imagine.

He lets go of this breath and takes another one. It’s not anywhere near steadying enough, so when he goes to knock, his hand is still trembling.

“Come in,” says a voice he would recognize anywhere.

Michael runs a hand through his hair, wincing when it brushes the bruise around his eye. He braces himself and pushes the door open.

The sight that greets him is so full of emotions that it takes him a solid thirty-second to take everything in. He sees the bed first, everything he'd expect from a hospital room, light blue walls and machines and a lot of white plastic. Then his eyes jump straight to Alex's face.

The other man looks older, is his first thought. Ten years, but also lines and a look in his eyes that age him far more than his actual twenty-seven years. He looks straight back at Michael, despite the fact that he has to strain to do so, his head maintained by a rigid neck brace. Fading bruises cover one side of his face, his eye still not completely open.

Michael's eyes travel further down, and he takes in a shocked breath. Alex is sitting in a partially reclined bed, his left arm resting in a sling and bandages peeking out of his tee-shirt under the neck brace. He's covered with a white blanket up to his waist, his uninjured right hand tightly grasping it at his side.

Where the bulge of his right foot should be, the blanket lays flatly against the bed. Michael blinks and freezes, his brain not quite capable of connecting the dots.

Alex follows his gaze, but he doesn’t say anything. He seems to let Michael get over the shock, by looking out of the window for a moment, then he shifts slightly in the bed and puts on a strange sort of smile. “Hi,” he says. “It’s been a while.”

Michael nearly sputters, _ten fucking years, Alex,_ but his shock doesn’t let him.

“Alex,” he breathes instead, firmly looking at his face.

“What happened to you?” Alex waves to his black eye.

“You’re asking me?” Michael frowns.

Alex shrugs awkwardly with one shoulder. “You already know about me.”

Michael doesn’t, not really. All Alex said is that he got injured overseas. And now he’s here in front of Michael with−

Fuck.

He doesn’t insist. “Your call brought back some...memories. I needed some way to evacuate.”

Alex tilts his head slightly in a way that would be familiar if it wasn’t impeded by the neck brace. “So you, what, you went to a bar and picked up a fight? Sounds legit.”

“I didn’t mean to, okay?” Michael defends himself before he even realizes what he’s doing. “I just needed to punch something. I don’t exactly have a gym in my trailer.”

“Trailer, uh?” Alex raises an eyebrow. “That’s where you live?”

“Yeah, out by the alien crash site. It’s an Airstream.”

Alex sighs softly. “I thought you’d be long gone by now.”

“I thought you’d never come back,” Michael shrugs.

“I didn't choose to,” Alex says. “They just shipped me back here as soon as I was able to fly.”

Michael doesn't let the sting of that,  _Alex didn't want to come back to him, _ get to him too badly. He knows, rationally, that the reason Alex stayed away isn't just that he didn't want to see him. He does. It's hard to get his brain to listen, sometimes.

“Why am I here?” he asks. The question has been pressing on his mind since he hanged up the phone yesterday. “Why did you call me?”

Alex looks away. “I didn't know who else to call.”

“Maria?” Michael asks. Alex mentioned her yesterday, and he remembers them being friends.

“She'll come on her day off, maybe. She doesn't have time. She can't drop everything for me.”

And Michael can? He closes his eyes. Of course he can. He just did.

“Your father?” he asks.

Michael knows it's unfair. But it stings, still, that Alex sided with the man who took a hammer to his hand, going so far as to enlist in the same branch of the military. He's told himself so many times that Alex probably had no choice, that Jesse Manes has to have forced him, he doesn't _know._ Maybe he needs to hear it from Alex.

“You know how he is,” Alex says, still not looking at him.

_Do I?_ Michael wonders.

“He's been by,” Alex continues. “Once. Enough to make him look like a caring father. Do you know that I outrank him now? Until I get discharged, that is.”

He says the last with a dreamy look on his face, as if he's talking to himself more than to Michael. The IV dripping what must be morphine into his veins may be responsible, or maybe it's just the thought of his father.

“I didn't,” Michael says. He tries to keep the bitterness out of his voice. Maybe Alex deserves it, but not today. “I don't know anything, Alex. I haven't heard a word from you in ten years, remember?”

“I wanted to call you,” Alex murmurs. “So many times.”

Michael doesn't ask why he didn't. He's too afraid of the answer.

“Look, I know you must hate me,” Alex says, looking at him this time. “I just really didn't know who to turn to. I thought about just not telling anyone I'm here, going through rehab and then hiding out in my cabin, but I don't think I can do that.”

“You have a cabin?” Michael asks, because the rest is too loaded for him to process just yet.

“Jim Valenti left me his, for some reason. His attorney was here yesterday.”

Michael nods, at a loss for words.

“I shouldn't have called,” Alex says sadly, following his own train of thoughts. “Just go, if you want. Don't feel...obligated to talk to me. I'd understand.”

“You said you're going to get discharged,” Michael says, because it's easier than trying to answer why he feels like he can never leave Alex out of his sight again. “That bad?”

“My leg's gone, Michael. Cripples aren't welcome in the Air Force.”

“In the field, maybe not, but I've seen disabled soldiers around here. Couldn't you get stationed somewhere stateside?”

“Even if I can, it won't be for months,” Alex sighs. “I don't know. But honestly right now it's not the most important thing on my mind.”

“Yeah,” Michael bites his lip. “I'm sorry.”

“Not your fault,” Alex answers straight away, like it's a rehearsed response.

Michael tilts his head. “No, but it's a rough deal.”

Alex bites his lip, looking away again. “Yeah.”

Michael gives him a moment, seeing that he's struggling to keep his emotions in check.

“I'm glad you called me,” he says on a whim. He's imagined this reunion before−without ever hoping for it−and it involved pouring out all his anger at Alex and, mostly, at Alex's father, but it turns out that isn't at all what he wants to do now. Maybe because Alex is injured, lying in a hospital bed before him, unable to escape the discussion if he wants to. Michael would like a more equal ground to stand on.

“You are?” Alex asks, and there is a raw honesty on his face that catches Michael off-guard.

“Yeah,” he says slowly. “I've been wondering where you'd ended up.” Wondering. Obsessing. Trying hard not to think about it. He's gone through every phase, so many times. “You haven't really kept in contact with anyone, and I wasn't exactly going to ask your father.”

“Yeah, I...I needed a clean break after I enlisted.”

“You could have gotten that without getting yourself all broken,” Michael quips, half-seriously.

“I didn't exactly mean to,” Alex snorts. It's not a laugh, exactly, not even a smile. It's close enough that Michael takes it as a small victory.

“What happened?” he decides to ask despite his earlier decision not to pry. Alex is an adult, he can always choose not to answer.

“Building collapsed on me. I was trapped under there for a few hours, and the blood flow in my leg was cut off. They couldn't save it.”

“Damn,” Michael sighs. “It's fucked up.”

Alex sustains his gaze, like he has something to prove. “I'll adapt,” he says. “I always have. But yeah, it's pretty fucked up.”

Michael nods. “Do you know−” he starts, but he doesn't know how to formulate his question.

“What's gonna happen now?” Alex guesses. “Not exactly. I'll get discharged in a couple of weeks, probably, and then I suppose I'll go to some rehab center.”

“Here in the city?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

M ichael shifts on his feet. Alex doesn't seem to realize that he's never offered him the seat beside his bed, but Michael isn't sure he can handle being this close to Alex and not kissing him senseless. Which would be a terrible idea.

“Listen,” Alex says when he sees that Michael isn't answering. “I know things went all kinds of wrong between us, but we're not kids anymore. Maybe we can't just start over, but−”

“But what?” Michael says when he trails off. He can imagine a dozen endings to that sentence, and he's not ready to commit to something left unsaid.

“I don't want to go through this alone,” Alex murmurs, and the vulnerability on his face is hard to watch.

Michael sighs. “And you shouldn't. But I'm not a stable person, Alex. I don't think I can be what you're looking for.”

“You don't know what I'm looking for.”

“Right now you're looking for someone who can support you. And I'm the guy who lives in a trailer and ends up in a decontamination cell every other week. That doesn't sound like a good match.”

“I don't care,” Alex says. “But I understand if you don't want to stay. I really shouldn't have called.”

Michael rolls his eyes. “That's not what I meant. I'm not leaving you here on your own. I just need you to realize that I'm not someone you can depend on.”

“And again, I don't care. I can take care of myself. Well, maybe not physically right now, but I'll figure that one out. I'm...I'm looking for a friend.”

“Just a friend?”

“Yeah,” Alex says slowly. “Maybe more, someday. But thinking about that is...a bit too much right now.”

Michael looks at him for a moment, thinking about it. Alex wants him. He's sure Maria could be the friend he needs, or that he could find someone else. But Alex wants _him._

He can do friends, if it's what it takes to keep them going.

“I think I can deal with that,” he says.

Alex gives him a tired smile. “Thank you.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed it! I'm already half-planning a sequel, but I don't know when I'll write it.
> 
> As always, I would be delighted to hear your thoughts.


End file.
